Eternal Darkness
by Aspirin
Summary: A spin-off of what happens to Anaesthesia after she gets taken from the Bridge.


Anaesthesia awoke to the swirling darkness of the Night's Bridge. She couldn't tell how much time had passed since the fingers of a Dark Form had grasped her up. All she knew was that one moment she had been walking with Richard and the beautiful woman, and the next, she was in the cold, lifeless hand of a Dark Form. The Dark Forms were what made up the unnatural darkness at the Night's Bridge. They guarded it, taking the unlucky majority who crossed it into their dark realm, to eat, or worse.  
  
Anaesthesia was part of that majority. She was also a Rat Speaker. But there were no rats down here. Only her and the darkness. When she had been with her barony, she had heard horror stories of what the Dark Forms did to people once they had been Taken. All the stories differed. She could deem them to be untrue, seeing as no one who had been Taken had ever come back. All who were Taken were said to be dead. That was what the Rats had told them. So Anaesthesia was amazed to find that she was still alive.  
  
She was rather wishing she were dead now, though. The darkness was suffocating. Her fears were becoming reality. Lithe fingers, or what she thought to be fingers, groped her body, invading her space. They felt her all over, exploring, touching, stroking. The fingers were colder than ice, they were the touch of death. It was worse than being kissed by a Velvet.  
  
Suddenly, a hand clasped her necklace. It began to yank at it, pulling viciously.  
  
"No!" screamed Anaesthesia.  
  
The necklace she was so proud of was being taken from her. She grabbed back at her necklace with one small hand and clawed at the thing that pulled back at her with the other. It did no use. The hand gave one final yank and the beads broke off her neck. They scattered up and to the sides, a small explosion. Anaesthesia fell back into solidness from the force. She hit a small bump, forcing her head up towards her chest.  
  
Angry, scared, and dazed, she sat up, supporting herself with her small arms. She began to scream out nonsense words, screaming forever and loudly. She screamed for her necklace. She screamed for her pain. She screamed for others who had died at the hands of the Dark Forms. But mostly, she screamed for herself. Slowly, her screams slipped away into the darkness, leaving her drained and tear-stained. She stood up slowly, planting her feet in what could only be called solidness. It was neither ground or mud. She couldn't see its surface. All she knew was that it held her weight.  
  
Aimlessly and lost, she began to walk away from the whispers and into a brighter blackness. As she wandered, she could feel shapes and figures slipping past her, brushing her shoulders. They were quieter than the rustle of leaves. Anaesthesia realized that maybe she wasn't the only live one down here. She tried to grab out to them, not realizing at the moment that she might regret what she would catch. She began to slide her hands through the air, hoping to snag a fellow straggler.  
  
In a rare moment of luck, Anaesthesia's finger wrapped around what felt like a fur patch of...something. The owner of the fur patch neither cried out or tried to disentangle itself from her desperate grasp. In fact, it grabbed hold of her sleeve with the same desperation. In time, Anesthesia realized that her eyes had either adjusted to the blackness, or that it was beginning to lighten.  
  
She looked at her new companion in where she thought its eyes should be, but all she found was a mask of more fur. If this form had eyes, they were covered discreetly and very well. She frowned, her mouth forming a crooked crease in her face as she studied the character.  
  
"Who," began Anesthesia, but thought better, "...What are you?"  
  
For a few moments, the figure stood there, blankly. Then, a thick, fleshy hand reached up and removed the top part of its mask, revealing a human face of an undeterminable sex.  
  
"I am a human, such as yourself. As for my name..." The figure paused, as if pondering its even having a name, and moreover, its existence. "Call me Eriyn," finished Eriyn.  
  
Anesthesia nodded. "I am Anesthesia, also a human." The two laughed. they laughed if for not insanity, then the amusment of having to state ones self as a human. Their laughter died out, leaving echoes of a short joy dancing through the darkness. Eriyn began to remove more of its facial masking, revealing that it was more or less a young man.  
  
His hands were grimy, as if it had plunged through millions of garbage pails looking for just the right scraps for his dinner. His fingers were like a piano player's, and the finger nails were long and cat like. There were a few dark red stains amongst molds. Anaesthesia suspected it was blood, though whether or not it was human, she couldn't tell. Though she couldn't see very well in the dark, his mask looked like a head of an animal, a cross between a cat and a fox. His whole ensemble of furs was colored dark auburns and oranges, like the endings of perfect sunset. Eriyn's figure, from what could be observed, was tall and scruffy. His face was lean and scraggly with beard stubble, a grayish brown, though the hair on his head was still dark. He had dark and penetrating eyes. Anaesthesia felt that he could see into her soul. She wrapped her ragged clothes around her in a self concious reflex. His nose was pointed, making it look like he was subtly sniffing the air. The elf shaped ears gave him a slight sense of calmness and nobility, the aura that all elves carry with them. Both Anaesthesia and Eriyn were pale, like daisies, from no sunlight. They seemed to glow, almost, in the darkness.  
  
"How long have you been here?" she asked. Eriyn looked at her and shrugged.  
  
She realized that it was a stupid question. You can't really tell how much time has passed in the darkness. Minutes could be hours and years could be a month. It looked as if Eriyn was about to speak again, but before she heard what he was going to say, they heard the horrible rasping whispers of the Dark Forms from somewhere near them. The duo looked at each other and silently agreed that they should run from the noises.  
  
As they began to run, Anaesthesia began to sense other shapes and figures around them, running for a safe haven from the whispers. The other figures were running in small groups of three and four. They were similar characters; they too were lost, half-dead souls looking to get their lives back from the darkness. Suddenly, Anaesthsia remembered a fragment of a sentence that the beautiful woman at the bridge had said, "...There is safety in numbers..."  
  
Looking again at the small groups, she gestured to Eriyn that he should keep up and follow her. Slowly, the small groups began to merge into larger packs, which in time, began to weave themselves into one large heard of stinking, frightened bodies.  
  
As they moved on ahead, the darkness started to gradually lighten. It was so gradual, you couldn't tell where it started and it took you awhile to realize that it was changing. In fact, Anaesthesia didn't realize it until she began to catch glimpses of dead and rotting bodies of those who had been here before. Amongst the bodies were skeletons of those who had been here before them. Anaesthesia decided that she didn't much like looking at the bodies. She kept running, knowing that if she stopped, she would become a dead and rotting body. And that was not something she wanted. Suddenly, a grey mist appeared ahead of the small crowd of life-forms. As they ran into the mist, the harsh whispers of threats and hunger began to disapear. So they stopped running.  
  
Warily, at first, the people began to explore the mist. The ground was still solid and there didn't appear to be a sky, just eternal blackness. But on top of the solidness, there were dents, like a giant mallet had pounded into it. In the dents were small pools of silver-grey water. It wasn't a pure and pretty silver grey. It was a very gloomy and tepid silver grey. In all the stories Anaesthesia had heard about the Darkness, this place had never occured in any of them. Hearing a loud rustle, she turned around to find a woman who looked older than time itself. Her eyes were a bleached blue, and her face was wrinkled like a raisin. More like many raisins put together and on top of each other. Anaesthesia took a step towards the raisin-lady.  
  
"Excuse me, but what is this place?" she asked.  
  
The raisin lady turned and looked deep into her face, as if searching for something. "This is the Mist," she said.  
  
"Does that mean that we are no longer in the Darkness? You mean that this is how we can get out?" Anesthesia said excitedly.  
  
"Child, just like London Below, there is no way to 'get out'. No one ever leaves this place. You are only one step before death. In fact, most people think that they would be better off dead. You can only go farther and farther away and hope that somehow you reach a safe haven."  
  
With that, the raisin-lady walked away from Anaesthesia.  
  
Anaesthesia felt sick. She didn't want to go farther down. She wanted to go back to the barony.  
  
"The Mist, eh?" said a low voice behind her.  
  
Again, she turned around. In her excitement at thinking that she could go home, Anaesthesia had forgotten about Eriyn. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, lest tears and racking sobs took over her.  
  
Eriyn shook his head, "I've been 'er a fore. The place looks 'miliar," he said with a lilting slang. "About safe you can get from a Dark Form. 'Ey hate water and mist stuffs."  
  
Anaesthesia looked surprised. "What do you mean you've been here before? Have you been here long?"  
  
"I mean that I been 'er afore. The firs' time I was 'er, I was a runnin' from the Dark Forms. I followed some of the others, runnin' with 'em. Stayed 'er for a while and the Dark Forms went 'way," answered Eriyn.  
  
"Ah. So, you know your way around, right?" said Anaesthesia.  
  
"Well, 't isn't all that easy to memorize yer way 'round in the complete dark, ya know. So, not really," said Eriyn.  
  
Dejected about not having a potential guide, Anaesthesia nodded in response.  
  
"I do 'member the last time I was here, dat there was a small openin' over on the other way of the Mist, though..." he offered.  
  
Ears perking up at this tidbit of information, Anaesthesia demanded, "Show me!"  
  
Eriyn gestured for her to follow.  
  
Silently, the two walked through the Mist. It seemed to Anesthesia that the mist formed vapor walls, like a ghost maze, that they walked through. Suddenly, Eriyn stopped and turned sharply to his left. Looked over at Anesthesia and pointed to a wall that she hadn't known existed. She followed his finger's direction and found what he saw: a small opening leading into another mist-filled place.  
  
"Let's explore it then," she said. The two had to push themselves through the opening to get through.  
  
While helping to pull Eriyn's body from out of the opening, she grunted, "Where do you think this leads?"  
  
She stumbled backwards as he finally came out of the opening. Looking around, he shrugged.  
  
"Dunno. Like I said, never been 'er afore." Looking around, the duo saw that they were in what appeared to be a wide passage. Walking forward, Eriyn and Anesthesia had no idea what they would encounter further on. All they could hope for was a way out. 


End file.
